The earthquake leaves Japanese workers stranded in a Tokyo hotel lobby as transport grinds to a halt. Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

I have been in plenty of earthquakes in Japan and never experienced anything like this – and we were not even close to the epicentre. It must have been horrendous there. The earth just keeps on shaking. I can feel it as I am speaking.

I was getting off a train at Shibuya station in central Tokyo and the platform started to move. I assumed it must be the train moving and it was only as I walked down the platform that everything really started. They said over the loudspeaker that it was a huge earthquake and we had to evacuate the building.

The most frightening thing was that all the roof panels were shaking like crazy. Everyone was looking up at the ceiling thinking it was going to cave in.

I was walking down a set of big stone steps while they wobbled underneath me. You have got these concrete buildings and it's as if they are made of jelly. It's in your mind that the building could collapse at any moment. Friends who were in skyscrapers said being on higher floors was terrifying because they were swaying so much.

Opposite the station itself they are building a new skyscraper, already maybe 40 storeys high, with two huge construction cranes on top. It was shaking and swaying from left to right with the cranes swaying.

Seeing a huge skyscraper flexing like that, wondering whether the crane was going to come down from the roof … [you realise] the people who designed these buildings are incredible. That they withstood this is a tribute to the architects and builders.

Everyone was in shock. Some people were crying and no one really knew what was happening. The first thing everyone wanted to do was call their relatives, but the phone lines went down immediately, although data was getting through.

I was with a group of office workers watching live TV and everyone was aghast at the images of the tsunami – absolutely shocked.

But what struck me was how calm everyone stayed even while it was happening. I was in a crowded station but no one was screaming. There has been no panic. People were prepared for it because of the earthquake drills in schools and so on. We know the big Tokyo earthquake is yet to strike.

Our neighbour says our house has basically been trashed [but] we are walking home now. There's a river of people. All the railways have shut down; the only public transport is buses. You have people queuing for hundreds of metres. People are going to be camping out in their offices or in public halls and schools that have opened [as shelters]. Shops are being stripped of food – the shelves are empty. People are buying anything.